October, so far has been a relatively quiet month with high pressure centred over Scandinavia controlling the weather across the UK for most of the past fortnight.

The influence of the high pressure has meant many places have seen rather dry weather but also a fair bit of sunshine under clear skies.

Mid month statistics (1 – 16 October) reveal that sunshine has been plentiful across many western parts of the UK. Northern Scotland has already seen more sunshine than would be expected for the whole of October, while western Scotland has already seen 80% of the October average for this district. Meanwhile, in the east of the UK onshore winds have been common, bringing cloud, occasional showers and less sunshine.

As is typical when high pressure is in charge, rainfall has also been limited with amounts for the UK up until the 16th at 27mm and only 21% of the October average (127.1mm). The anomaly map reveals a similar pattern to the sunshine amounts with rainfall totals in the west of the UK below what you would expect for mid-way through October. Places like Argyllshire, and Ross and Cromarty have so far received less than 10% of October’s expected rainfall, with only 21.8mm and 6.7mm recorded, respectively.

1-16 October 2016

Sunshine hours

Rainfall

Actual hours

Anm %

Actual mm

Anm %

UK

69.7

75

27.0

21

England

72.4

70

25.3

28

Wales

74.1

80

31.1

18

Scotland

66.1

88

26.8

15

N Ireland

57.6

66

38.2

32

Although this past weekend did see spells of rain for much of the country, the forecast for the remainder of this week is for colder and drier weather to become established, especially across northern and western parts, as high pressure builds once more. However, later next weekend rain may affect some southern and western parts as temperatures recover closer to average for the time of year.